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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
131. Therefore I must now look for no other than his fierce wrath, but my stay, trust and refuge is the Champion in the Fight, who hath often delivered me from his bands, in this Champion I will fight against him, till my departure out of this life. Of the terrible, lamentable and miserable Perdition of Lucifer in the Seventh NatureSpirit. The sad Mourning House of Death. 32. If all trees were writers or clerks, and all branches were pens, and all hills were books, and all waters were ink, yet they could not sufficiently describe the lamentable misery which Lucifer, together with his angels, hath brought into his place or whole space of that world wherein he was created. 33. For he hath made the house of light to be a house of darkness, and the house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation and sadness; that which was the house of pleasure, delight, vivifying and refreshing, he hath made to be a house of thirst and hunger; the house of love to be a house of eternal enmity; and the house of meekness to be a house of knocking, rumbling,* thundering and lightning; the house of peace to be a house of lamenting and eternal howling; the house of laughing to be a house of eternal trembling and horror: * "knocking, rumbling" (Pochen) See Ch. 10, par. 119. 34. The birth or geniture of light, munificence and welldoing to be an eternal hellish pain and torment; the food of pleasing relish to be an eternal abomination and stink, a loathing of all fruits; and the house of Lebanon and cedars to be a stony and rocky house of fire; the sweet
2scent or relish to be a stink, and a house of ruin and desolation, an end of all good; the divine body to be a black, cold, hot, eating, corroding, and yet not consuming devil, who is an enmity against God and his angels: And so he hath all the heavenly hosts or armies against him. Now observe: 35. The learned have had many disputations, questions, conceits and opinions concerning the fierce malignity and evil that is in all the creatures in this world, and even in the very sun and stars; moreover, there are some so very poisonous and venomous beasts, worms and vegetables in this world, that thereupon rational men have justly wondered, and some have concluded peremptorily, That God must needs have willed the evil also, seeing he hath created so much that is evil; and some have laid the blame and fault thereof upon the fall of Adam, and some have imputed it to the work and doings of the devil. 36. But seeing all the creatures and vegetables were created before the time of man, therefore the fault ought not to be laid upon man; for man gat not the bestial body in his creation, but it first came to be so in his fall. 37. Neither hath man brought the malignity, poison and venom into the beasts, birds, worms, and stones, for he had not their body; otherwise if he had brought malignity and fierceness or wrath into all creatures, then he, like the devils, could never obtain God's mercy. 38. Poor man did not fall out of a resolved, purposed will, * but through the poisonous, vonomous infection of the devil, else there had been no remedy for him.
3* " out of a resolved, purposed will," or, " on account of" or " in consequence of, an intentional will." 39. Now this true information thou wilt find, described here following, not from a zeal to vilify anybody thereby, but in love, and as a humble information and instruction from the abyss of my spirit, and for an assured comfort to the poor, sick old Adam, who now lieth at the point of his last departure from hence out of this world. 40. For in Christ we are all one body, therefore also this spirit would heartily fain have it so, that its fellowmembers might be refreshed with a draught of the precious wine of God be/ore their departure from hence, whereby they might encounter and stand in the great fight with the devil, and obtain the victory, that the victory of the devil in this modern drunken world might be disappointed and destroyed, and the great name of the LORD might be sanctified. Now behold! 41. When king Lucifer, together with his angels, was so gloriously, beautifully and divinely created, as a Cherubim and king in God, then he suffered his bright, beauteous form to befool him, in that he saw how noble, glorious and fair a spirit rose up in him. 42. Then his seven qualifying or fountain spirits thought they would elevate and kindle themselves, and so they also would be as fair, glorious and mighty as the animated or soulish spirit, and thereby would domineer, by their own power and authority, in the whole court, circumference, dominion or extent as a new god.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
131. Therefore I must now look for no other than his fierce wrath, but my stay, trust and refuge is the Champion in the Fight, who hath often delivered me from his bands, in this Champion I will fight against him, till my departure out of this life. Of the terrible, lamentable and miserable Perdition of Lucifer in the Seventh NatureSpirit. The sad Mourning House of Death. 32. If all trees were writers or clerks, and all branches were pens, and all hills were books, and all waters were ink, yet they could not sufficiently describe the lamentable misery which Lucifer, together with his angels, hath brought into his place or whole space of that world wherein he was created. 33. For he hath made the house of light to be a house of darkness, and the house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation and sadness; that which was the house of pleasure, delight, vivifying and refreshing, he hath made to be a house of thirst and hunger; the house of love to be a house of eternal enmity; and the house of meekness to be a house of knocking, rumbling,* thundering and lightning; the house of peace to be a house of lamenting and eternal howling; the house of laughing to be a house of eternal trembling and horror: * "knocking, rumbling" (Pochen) See Ch. 10, par. 119. 34. The birth or geniture of light, munificence and welldoing to be an eternal hellish pain and torment; the food of pleasing relish to be an eternal abomination and stink, a loathing of all fruits; and the house of Lebanon and cedars to be a stony and rocky house of fire; the sweet
2scent or relish to be a stink, and a house of ruin and desolation, an end of all good; the divine body to be a black, cold, hot, eating, corroding, and yet not consuming devil, who is an enmity against God and his angels: And so he hath all the heavenly hosts or armies against him. Now observe: 35. The learned have had many disputations, questions, conceits and opinions concerning the fierce malignity and evil that is in all the creatures in this world, and even in the very sun and stars; moreover, there are some so very poisonous and venomous beasts, worms and vegetables in this world, that thereupon rational men have justly wondered, and some have concluded peremptorily, That God must needs have willed the evil also, seeing he hath created so much that is evil; and some have laid the blame and fault thereof upon the fall of Adam, and some have imputed it to the work and doings of the devil. 36. But seeing all the creatures and vegetables were created before the time of man, therefore the fault ought not to be laid upon man; for man gat not the bestial body in his creation, but it first came to be so in his fall. 37. Neither hath man brought the malignity, poison and venom into the beasts, birds, worms, and stones, for he had not their body; otherwise if he had brought malignity and fierceness or wrath into all creatures, then he, like the devils, could never obtain God's mercy. 38. Poor man did not fall out of a resolved, purposed will, * but through the poisonous, vonomous infection of the devil, else there had been no remedy for him.
3* " out of a resolved, purposed will," or, " on account of" or " in consequence of, an intentional will." 39. Now this true information thou wilt find, described here following, not from a zeal to vilify anybody thereby, but in love, and as a humble information and instruction from the abyss of my spirit, and for an assured comfort to the poor, sick old Adam, who now lieth at the point of his last departure from hence out of this world. 40. For in Christ we are all one body, therefore also this spirit would heartily fain have it so, that its fellowmembers might be refreshed with a draught of the precious wine of God be/ore their departure from hence, whereby they might encounter and stand in the great fight with the devil, and obtain the victory, that the victory of the devil in this modern drunken world might be disappointed and destroyed, and the great name of the LORD might be sanctified. Now behold! 41. When king Lucifer, together with his angels, was so gloriously, beautifully and divinely created, as a Cherubim and king in God, then he suffered his bright, beauteous form to befool him, in that he saw how noble, glorious and fair a spirit rose up in him. 42. Then his seven qualifying or fountain spirits thought they would elevate and kindle themselves, and so they also would be as fair, glorious and mighty as the animated or soulish spirit, and thereby would domineer, by their own power and authority, in the whole court, circumference, dominion or extent as a new god.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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